


The Measure of Loyalty

by biqua



Series: Measurements [4]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, It's all troopers, so many troopers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-03-26 04:42:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13850337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biqua/pseuds/biqua
Summary: It's been ten years since the Treaty of Coruscant was signed, and it's starting to fall apart. Tameva Emras has seen it first-hand on Corellia. Now, four years after the death of her fiancé, she's ready to return to the field. Chertan Brash is no stranger to Imperial interference either. He is still struggling to understand the tragic events that occurred when he was first stationed on Coruscant, three years ago. Neither of them expect greatness from themselves, but Personnel has something different in mind...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You know how I said a long, long time ago, way back when I started posting _Machines_ , that Brash had his own fic coming? This is that fic.
> 
> I highly recommend you read the previous two completed fics in this series (Friendship and Machines) before this one. This takes place shortly after the second epilogue of Machines, around the time of the Coruscant class storylines in SWTOR. It will, of course, have next to nothing to do with any of the game plots, because that's who I am as a writer. (Plus, Badri gets to go handle those. Have fun dealing with Havoc.) Tameva and Brash get to deal with their own sidequests and problems.

“Reassignment?”

“Yeah,” Chertan said, looking down at the datapad. “Must be.”

“But why?” Dune asked. “They just sent us new recruits.”

“They’ll probably promote you to CO,” Chertan pointed out. He couldn’t quite bring himself to open the message.

He had been stationed here on Coruscant for three years now, and it almost felt like home. He had stayed on planets for shorter periods of time growing up as his mother was moved from one research facility to the next. And his moms liked him here on Coruscant too—they thought it was safer than a posting in the Outer Rim. Chertan wasn’t so sure about that, but there were perks to staying on a Core World. Shops, cantinas, people who somewhat trusted Republic officers…

He wasn’t looking forward to leaving. It had been him and Dune for three years, training green recruits and officers to get some real field experience before being reassigned further out. They were damn good at it too. Or, at least, Dune was. Chertan wasn’t sure where his skills were best suited, a combination of sniping and hard-learned hand-to-hand, but it did make more sense for Dune to be CO. He didn’t know why they had placed him in charge. She was the one who seemed to pick up new skills like a sponge, a genius-level ability to learn new combat techniques and pass them on to others. Wherever he ended up, Dune would do just as good a job without him.

Which was kind of a lonely thought.

“C’mon, open it,” Dune insisted, leaning over his shoulder.

With a half-joking snort, Chertan moved so she couldn’t read it, and opened the message.

He got about two sentences in before it stopped making sense.

He drew a sharp breath, and Dune leaned back over. “What?” she asked impatiently.

“Damn,” he whispered in awe.

“Blackbirds?!” Dune exclaimed, clearly having read as far as he made it. “By the Force, Brash, you’d be an idiot to pass this up!”

“I know,” he said weakly, still dazed. _Blackbirds_. They had been one of the earliest SpecForce teams, second only to Havoc Squad themselves. Blackbird Squad had operated in covert missions during the beginning of the Cold War, but that hadn’t stopped them from gaining attention. The rumor was that every single one of their missions had been a success, even though no one would confirm it. The majority of their missions were still classified, and the members…

No one really knew what had killed the members of Blackbirds. That was classified too. All Chertan knew was that after nearly half a year of radio silence, the Republic had made a small announcement that the entire squad had been killed on a mission. That was it. And in the past four years, no move had been made to rebuild the squad, or give the name to a new team. It had sat in disuse, in mourning.

And now, Chertan was being assigned to team OR186. Codename Blackbird Squad. _As XO_.

A sergeant. Three years of experience on Coruscant, and they were assigning him to lead a team in the Outer Rim? It was… flattering. And nerve-breaking.

He scrolled further down, and, if possible, things made _less_ sense.

“No way,” he whispered. “No fucking way!” he repeated, shouting.

“What?!” Dune asked. She turned back to the datapad and read aloud. “Chertan Brash… yada yada, executive officer, under commanding officer—that can’t be right!” she shouted.

Dune wrestled the datapad out of his hands. Chertan could still see the one word that had grabbed his attention and shaken him to his core. The name of his CO.

 _Emras_.

Dune sighed. “False alarm. Tameva Emras. She’s Miralukan, so no relation.”

“What are the chances of that?” he asked weakly. He felt suddenly sick. “It’s not a common name.”

“Yeah, but he’s not married or anything,” Dune replied.

He raised an eyebrow. “And how do you know that?” he asked.

Dune shrugged, an apology in her voice. “I saw him when I took the new recruits out drinking last week.”

“Ah,” he breathed. “That’s why you told me not to come.”

“What are the chances you would have picked a fight with him there in the cantina?”

Chertan scoffed. “Give me some credit. I would have taken it outside.” But she had a point. Chertan didn’t think he would be able to see… _him_ and keep his cool. Fighting would be the best option. The worst would bring him back to that day, back to…

He shook his head. “I knew that line about me scaring the recruits was bullshit.”

“You can be pretty intimidating,” Dune said, leaning surprisingly close. “Especially to a country girl fresh out of the Academy.”

Before he really knew what was happening, her lips were on his. He was surprised—but not upset. No, not in the slightest…

Unsure if it was the right thing to do, but willing to take the chance now that she had broken the ice, Chertan reached around her shoulders and pulled her closer. She responded in kind, arms around his torso.

She pulled her mouth away from his gently. “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do that,” she breathed.

“Mmm,” Chertan murmured, temporarily forgetting how to make coherent words.

“But it’s not proper for a CO and his XO to be involved,” Dune continued. She was still close enough that her breath was warm on his nose. Oh stars, he wanted to kiss her again.

“I’m still your CO,” he pointed out with a smirk. “For the next week, at least.”

“I reckon we can be improper for a week,” Dune replied. “But with you going to the Outer Rim, I wasn’t going to miss my chance.”

“That would be a shame,” Chertan agreed, leaning in again.

A week, huh? He would just have to make the most of it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which we learn Brash's callsign. There is a reason it never came up in _Friendship/Machines_ , and it has everything to do with Badri wanting to ignore his own callsign.

Tameva fidgeted uncomfortably with her mask, trying to straighten it for the fifth time. She was tired, so unbelievably tired, of the questions that came with it.

_A Miralukan? In the military?_

_Why aren’t you with the Jedi?_

_Oh, you must be one of those cross-trained Jedi commanders._

No. She wasn’t. Damn everything, she couldn’t be, even if she wanted to. Which, honestly, she didn’t.

But she grew up with the expectation. Her family had been a part of the Luka Sene for centuries, with two Jedi in the past two generations. And here she was, the odd one out. The black sheep. The poor, blinded, little girl.

To other species, that was a self-evident statement—all Miraluka were blind to them. To Tameva, it meant something different. Unlike the rest of her family, she had always been weak in the Force. As it was, she could barely manage enough Force Sight to pass the alternate senses exam required to join the military. The universe was shades of blur to her, often out of focus, fading into nothingness at the edge of her meager perception.

They had shown their pity in different ways. Her parents tended to ignore her in favor of her more talented siblings. Her older sister had babied her, at least until she had left to join the Luka Sene too. Tameva hadn’t heard from her since. Her younger siblings followed her parent’s suit, interacting with her as little as necessary. They just didn’t know how to interact with her. She couldn’t participate in most of their conversations, all of which required seeing the world in a particular way. Tameva couldn’t. So, she had left, and she never looked back. Even the letters had stopped, polite correspondence fading into silence as the messages got shorter and shorter on both sides. She didn’t hate them, not exactly. She just didn’t know how to relate to them, and they didn’t know how to relate to her. It was sad, maybe, but that was life. Tameva had dealt with worse.

She hoped her new team had the sense not to ask her those questions. Her record answered it clear enough—SpecForce academy, a year of combat duty on Corellia, four years of non-combat mechanic duty, still on Corellia. Corellia, with its cosmopolitan air and diversity, which felt more like home now than anywhere else ever had. The buildings of Coruscant felt cold and unwelcoming in comparison.

The Senate Tower was just as enormous as she had remembered it. _Cavernous inside,_ she thought. Still, she had gotten their assignment, and was just waiting for the other members of the team now. Major Skyliss had not wasted time on meaningless words, which Tameva appreciated.

The first one to arrive was, unsurprisingly, Sergeant Chertan Brash. He had been stationed on Coruscant for nearly as long as Tameva had been on Corellia—in theory, their time at the Academy must have overlapped, although Tameva couldn’t remember crossing paths with him. She was a little nervous about working with a new XO, especially someone who had just been under his own command, but his record spoke for itself.

Brash slowed as he approached her. If he had any surprise, it was well hidden, as he gave her a single nod. She returned it.

Specialist Euruia Argestes arrived on his heel. She was older than Tameva expected for someone fresh out of the Academy, but not all new recruits were as eager to escape their childhood as she was. Argestes carried herself with… _ease_ was the only word Tameva could find to describe it. She shimmered slightly more than Brash in Tameva’s vision.

That left just one member, which had been the reason for the Major’s terseness.

“Hello,” Tameva said, and they both turned to attention. “As I’m sure you already know, I am Lieutenant Tameva Emras. Callsign Meteor.”

Brash caught on to her invitation easily. “Sergeant Chertan Brash, callsign Dragnet,” he said.

“Specialist Euruia Argestes, Hat-trick,” Argestes said.

“Aren’t there supposed to be four of us?” Brash asked, turning to look around.

Tameva grimaced. “That’s our first mission. Unfortunately, Corporal Balric Cey, our medical officer, has been trapped behind enemy lines on Balmorra. Since the situation there is already short-staffed, we’ve been tasked with retrieving him ourselves.”

Brash gave a slight laugh. “Of course.”

“Good way to meet the team, at least,” Argestes commented.

“I’d prefer a cantina, myself,” Brash replied. He was beginning to ease up, just slightly, but Tameva could still read his tenseness—it was so obvious even she could see it. His voice was breezy, though. He was clearly used to introductions.

Tameva smiled. “I wish. Our detail is typically the Outer Rim, so pickings will be few and far between. We have a lot to live up to, after all,” she added, pointing at the insignia on her shoulder. She trailed a finger over it, even though she knew it by heart. A bird rising out of the circle, one wing extending out to the right. She never thought she would have it embossed into her own armor.

“That’s true,” Brash agreed. He seemed pensive. “Quite a name, huh?”

Argestes nodded.

“Well, we don’t have time to delay,” Tameva said. “Cey’s still out there, and Balmorra isn’t going to get any better if we wait around here.”

“To the ship,” Argestes said, excitement sneaking into her voice. She was the pilot, after all. 

Tameva led the way, although she suspected Brash knew the way to the spaceport better than she did. At least the two of them had spared her the questions. That was a better start than most.


	3. Chapter 3

Chertan had gotten good at reading people, especially new officers. He had lost count of how many green officers he and Dune had been expected to put through the ropes before their assignment to more “exciting” locales. Not that Coruscant wasn’t its own brand of exciting. Politics had never been his favorite, but there was so much more to the city-world than the Senate. People in all their complexity. Which meant a lot of work for him to do to keep the peace, especially on the lower levels. Stars, he was not going to miss wading into Justicar territory every other week. Bastards.

The lieutenant wasn’t new, so much as… out of practice. Chertan could see her getting back into the rhythm of things, muscle memory taking back over. Command was new to her, but he had sympathy for that—the first few weeks of his own command had been as awkward as anything else in his life. Dune certainly hadn’t helped, so he at least had a short list of things he _didn’t_ want his XO to do as he established command. It also probably helped that there were only three of them at the moment, and Specialist Argestes was new to the field entirely.

…Well, maybe not entirely. Chertan wondered a little about her background. The way she carried herself suggested that none of this was new to her.

The Lieutenant certainly had an interesting story as well—Chertan had never met a Miralukan who wasn’t cross-trained with the Jedi—but he wasn’t exactly interested in hearing it. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to want to tell it. That worked better for him.

“Have you been to Balmorra before?” the lieutenant asked. The three of them fit in the pilot’s area of the ship, although it was tight. Argestes set it on autopilot and turned around.

“No,” she said. Even when she spoke, her voice had the quality of a whisper. “Heard it’s a real shitshow right now, though.”

The lieutenant gave a brief laugh. “So I hear. Then again, Corellia’s not that much better. What about you, Brash?”

“Not for a while,” he said, thinking back. It had been… what, a decade and a half? “Lived there for about… oh, a year and a half when I was little. My mother got moved to a research station there. Not that bad, but it was during a lull. I haven’t been back since.” There wasn’t much of a reason—he hadn’t made any friends in the small research commune, and it’s not like he enjoyed the scenery. Or the mud.

“You move around a lot?” the Lieutenant asked.

Chertan shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so.” Instinctively, he turned to Argestes, trying to direct the lieutenant’s attention away from him. “You did too, right?”

Argestes gave him a curious look. “How did you know?”

Another little shrug. “It’s a guess, mostly. You don’t carry yourself like you’re fresh out of the Academy—you look like you’ve seen combat elsewhere.”

She laughed. “Not directly, not really. My parents are independent pilots—shit happens. I figured signing up for the Republic was the fastest way to get off their ship and onto my own. Plus, it’s a good cause,” she added, almost as an afterthought. She was sincere, though. “I always try to direct them towards the Republic when I can.”

“Independent pilots,” the lieutenant repeated, skepticism in her voice.

 “You know what I fucking mean,” Argestes said, exasperated. “They make credits in… a few different ways. I don’t get involved in the legality of it, and I’d appreciate it if neither of you poked too hard.”

The lieutenant held her hands up in a gesture of surrender, and said, “No worries. I’m only interested in you. Or, your legality. Of your actions,” she said, stumbling over her words.

“As long as we don’t run into them on a mission, I don’t care either,” Chertan added.

Argestes laughed darkly. “Oh, fuck, I really hope we don’t.”

“We should be getting close,” Chertan said, trying to drive the conversation somewhere else. As a bonus, it was even true.

Argestes turned around again. “Yes, we have about ten minutes. Time to suit up?” She stood up.

“Don’t bother,” the lieutenant told her. “You’re staying here. Brash and I will handle this one.”

Argestes paused. Chertan wasn’t sure if she was disappointed or relieved. “You sure, Lieutenant?”

“I’ve read your record,” the lieutenant said, turning to Brash. “I’m not sure you even need me, but it’s safer to go with backup. But I have the feeling we’re going to want a quick evac, which means someone has to stay up here at the ship. That means you, Argestes.”

She gave a surprisingly clean salute. “Yes, sir.”

The lieutenant was watching Chertan again now. He was less uncomfortable with her attention than he was with most Jedi—or, really, he was uncomfortable for an entirely different reason.

It was because every time he looked at her, he remembered the same question. The one he couldn’t ask her, because he didn’t want to know the answer. Because if she had any answer to give, other than confusion, it would mean he could never work with her.

“Are you ready, Sergeant?” she asked.

Chertan smiled. He couldn’t quite bring himself to salute. “I’ll have your back out there, lieutenant. No need to be concerned.”

“Good,” she said. “We’ve got enough to worry about.” She paused for a moment, still staring at him—or whatever Miraluka called it. She spoke to Argestes without turning, “How long do we have?”

“Eight minutes,” Argestes replied.

The lieutenant nodded and headed out of the room. Chertan sighed, feeling somewhat relieved, and left to gear his own kit.


End file.
